Macbook drive in a PC?

July 31, 2008 1:14 PM

Is there anything that would prevent a working Macbook hard drive from working in a PC notebook? Is there something different about them that makes them not work in a PC?
posted by raddevon to Technology (6 answers total)

The file systems are different. The PC should recognize the dive, but won't boot from it. What are you hoping to accomplish?
posted by cnc at 1:17 PM on July 31, 2008

If it's an Intel Macbook then there's no HARDWARE reason it wouldn't work. That said, are you trying to BOOT from this hard drive? That likely won't happen because the hardware is so vastly different, and most likely unsupported by the Mac OS, that it will never boot.

And if you put it in there just to format it and install XP or Vista, booting from the CD/DVD, then it may or may not have trouble deleting the old partition.

But if you describe your exact problem in more detail I may be able to provide more advice.
posted by arniec at 1:17 PM on July 31, 2008

Physically, no. However, you have to ensure that they're the same size and drive interface specification (PATA, SATA. SATA-2).

After that you would have to reformat the drive to use in the PC if you want to boot from it.
posted by junesix at 1:18 PM on July 31, 2008

Response by poster: I have formatted the Macbook hard drive FAT and shipped it off to an eBay buyer who wanted it. Now he's saying it doesn't work. He wouldn't say why. I'm just trying to see if he has a legitimate case. It was an Intel Mac.
posted by raddevon at 1:56 PM on July 31, 2008

It's an electronic component with moving parts. It was shipped. Of course it could have gone bad.

Or he could have dropped it when he got it.

So now we're into a new category: eBay TOS. Which BLOW for the seller.

If they paid by Paypal you are hosed:

*If you shipped with shipping confirmation the person has the option to ship it back to you at their expense and you refund the purchase amount but (I believe) not the shipping amount

*If you shipped without shipping confirmation they can claim they never got it and you have to prove they did.

If they didn't pay with Paypal then you just await the complaint with eBay and a strike against you on some database somewhere...

But it's not an incompatibility...it's either a broken hard drive or a scam.
posted by arniec at 2:15 PM on July 31, 2008

I think it is unlikely that the buyer is trying to scam raddevon. He probably just can't get the the drive to work. It might be because the drive was damaged, or more likely, the buyer lacks the technical skills to properly install it and/or initialize it.

If this were my auction, I would offer the buyer a few things to try by way of minimal technical support. If he still couldn't get the drive operational, I would have him ship it back and I would refund what he paid AFTER I had the drive back in hand and had verified it was the same drive I sent out. If I then found the drive operational, I would just sell it again.
posted by rglasmann at 6:04 AM on August 1, 2008